Articles about Messaging and Collaboration

It sounds like something from a James Bond film -- or something from a creepy news story about a landlord stalking one of his tenants -- but the headline relates to a real story. We're all only too aware of the activities of the NSA and other governmental agencies monitoring the telephone and internet activities of people around the world, but the latest revelations see things taking a turn for the seriously sinister.

The UK intelligence agency GCHQ, between 2008 and 2010, tapped into the webcam chats of millions of Yahoo users.

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Windows Phone is off to a good start in 2014. Microsoft just announced that more smartphone vendors will embrace its tiled operating system, and extended the hardware support to include more Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. A new iteration is reported to arrive shortly, to bring its feature set on par with those of its main rivals, Android and iOS.

And, today, BlackBerry announces that it will bring its BBM service to Windows Phone. "BBM continues to grow in popularity as millions of people use our mobile platform for chatting and connecting with friends or colleagues, and we are very excited that we will soon welcome Windows Phone and Nokia X users to the BBM community", says BlackBerry Global Enterprise Solutions president John Sims. Also, Adobe's Photoshop Express will soon be offered on the platform as well, after reaching Android and iOS first.

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WhatsApp messenger has gained quite the following. This is kind of surprising though, as services like Google Hangouts and iMessage already exist. I've never understood the allure of the service, outside the potential for "free" messages if someone does not have an unlimited text plan. I can't imagine that is too many people -- after all, many carriers offer inexpensive unlimited texting. The most glaring negative is that the other party has to install the app too. Why not just use Google Hangouts? Or Skype? Or Facebook Messenger?

Yes, Facebook already has a messenger protocol and a dedicated messenger app. It is pretty good too, it offers read receipts and locations -- I use it quite a bit. With that said, Facebook announces it is purchasing WhatsApp for a staggering 19 billion dollars. Wait -- what!?

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BlackBerry is struggling in the smartphone market, but the Canadian company is seeing better results with its BBM service, which grew by 20 million users in just one week after it arrived on rival platforms Android and iOS in late-2013. It is no wonder then that BlackBerry is focusing on making BBM even better, especially for those who are not using its branded smartphones.

Today, BlackBerry announced the release of BBM 2.0, for Android and iOS, and BBM 10.3 for BlackBerry OS. The latest version adds many new features to the available apps, with BBM Voice and Channels finally arriving on rival platforms as well, allowing its Android and iOS users to make free calls via Wi-Fi and cellular networks, and take advantage of the built-in networking options.

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The name 37signals may not mean much to people outside of tech and business circles. This is a company that produces something that is better known than its own name: Basecamp. The very fact that 37signals is primarily, or even solely, associated with Basecamp seems as good a reason as any to consider a rebrand, and this is precisely what the company is doing. While some people content themselves with blowing out candles on a cake, 37signals celebrates its tenth birthday by renaming itself Basecamp.

But it does not end there. In addition to taking a new name from its popular online collaboration and project management tool, the company is switching its focus so that Basecamp is its only product. The announcement appears on the company's website, explaining that the decision will allow all energies to be channeled into the tool that gained greatest success:

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Even though Gingerbread's days of glory have long passed, the three-year old distribution is still running on more than 20 percent of all Android devices accessing Google Play. Those are smartphones actively used by people across the globe, which will not receive an upgrade to a newer version of the mobile operating system.

This presents a problem for BlackBerry. The Canadian maker wants to increase the user base of its BBM service, but the app available on Google Play is only compatible with smartphones that are running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and newer. BBM for Android does not even work on tablets, unlike its iOS counterpart. Luckily for those stuck on Gingerbread that is shortly set to change.

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In March 2013, popular note-taking service Evernote announced a partnership with German mobile operator Deutsche Telekom which would enable the latter's subscribers to receive free access, for one year, to the Evernote Premium plan. First available only in Germany, the offer is now extending to 12 more European countries.

There is a caveat, however. While German subscribers have been able to benefit from 12 months of free Evernote Premium, the Deutsche Telekom customers in the additional eligible countries -- Albania, Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Montenegro, Macedonia, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Slovakia -- only get half as much (six months).

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Mobile devices have completely transformed the way we connect with others. We can chat from anywhere these days, assuming there is an Internet connection available. What was once primarily aimed at browsers and traditional PCs has since fully embraced mobile computing, or vanished. There are also new, mobile-friendly apps and services that leverage features offered by smart devices to offer more personal and private ways to reach friends, family, coworkers and other folks.

For social butterflies Windows Phone has quite a lot to offer. The tiled smartphone operating system neatly integrates with popular services like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, allowing users to easily post updates from within their Me tile, see what others are doing and respond to their activity on said social networks in the People hub. But there are also dedicated apps available in Store that offer more, and we are going to take a look at the best of them in this article.

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Right before the end of the year, Microsoft releases an update for its OneNote Android app which adds major features and improvements, as well as better integration with the mobile operating system.

OneNote now makes it easier for Android users to share content from another app, as the new version of the note-taking software introduces an Add to OneNote option in the OS' Share via menu. Rival players like Evernote have offered this feature for quite some time, so it's nice to see that Microsoft is paying attention to the competition and enabling a more tailored user experience.

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As the flu subsides some, I feel ever so cranky and, hehe, suspicious. So I look askance at the newest Gmail changes and ask my favorite question: "Who benefits?" By product manager John Rae-Grant's reckoning, you do. But Google gains more from plans to display remote images.

Yeah, images make your email look prettier, when Uncle Duck sends a collage of his vintage Winchester and new truck. But they also snazz up spam -- the stuff you don't want -- and advertising collateral you desire about as much but which is gold to Google and its partners. Stated differently, and I will explain why later: Gmail image changes make Google spam's middleman. Say, can some grifter give a con game's name in comments to this thing?

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On Monday, a number of Yahoo Mail users started experiencing issues when accessing the service. The company said, yesterday, a hardware problem in one of its mail data centers is the culprit and, as a result, it assigned "dozens of people", who are allegedly "working around the clock", to get Yahoo Mail back on track.

If you are wondering why it took Yahoo so long to acknowledge the problem then you are not alone. The company initially said at 11 AM PST on Wednesday that the full functionality of its email service will be restored "by 3 PM PT", on the same day. Half an hour after the first, and only, deadline Yahoo was still working "hard" to fix the problem.

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Google is renowned for its lack of Windows Phone 8 support. The search giant currently has a single app in Store -- which, surprisingly, just received a nice update, its first big one since March 2012 -- with no plans on the horizon to bring popular apps like Drive, Gmail, Google+, Maps or YouTube to the tiled smartphone operating system.

Being a user myself, I can see why some folks would give up on waiting for the real deal and start to embrace a third-party app or switch to a rival service instead. Fortunately, developers have released competent clients for Google services, like MetroMail that provides a solid Gmail experience in the absence of an official Windows Phone 8 app.

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Canadian maker BlackBerry is expanding the reach of its BBM service through the latest update for the iOS app, that now includes support for non-cellular Apple-branded devices. As a result, Wi-Fi iPad and iPod users can also communicate with their BBM-using friends, as the app no longer limits access only to iPhones and 3G/4G iPads.

BlackBerry has yet to bestow non-cellular Android devices with the same ability, as BBM is still listed as being incompatible with tablets like the Wi-Fi 2013 Google Nexus 7 even in the latest version of the app that arrived yesterday. Now let's take a look at what (else) the Android and iOS updates for BBM add.

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The need for more secure communication services has certainly spiked in the wake of the NSA spying revelations, with providers placing a higher emphasis on keeping their users' personal and work information safe from unwanted access. After all, those users expect (and demand) them to do so. As a result, it is not out of the ordinary to see the word "secure" being used as one of the many buzzwords that describe such services nowadays. The question is whether the presentation matches the behind-the-scenes reality.

Among the slew of services that promise secure communications is Perzo, which launched as a beta in late-August 2013. Perzo was founded by David Gurle, who is best known for his former roles as head of the Windows Messenger development and general manager and vice president of Skype for Business in the early 2000s. The service piqued my attention, and I chatted with the man to find out what sort of features and security options Perzo can bring to the table as a newcomer in the "secure communications application" market.

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Microsoft has introduced a major update for Office Web Apps, meant to improve collaboration on documents. At the same time, the latest update also allows the service to better compete against its arch-rival, Google Docs.

The Excel, PowerPoint and Word cloud apps are getting real-time co-authoring, a feature that has been available for quite some time in Google Docs. Put simply, this means that users can perform simultaneous edits, with the said cloud apps also informing folks whenever someone else is altering a certain part of the document. The real-time co-authoring is augmented by the ability to see text and formatting changes in files as they are being made.

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